


The Shoes that were Danced to Pieces

by TheColorBlue



Category: 12 Dancing Princesses (Fairy Tale), Original Work
Genre: Gen, about a ballet dancer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-21
Updated: 2012-02-21
Packaged: 2017-10-31 13:04:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/344340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheColorBlue/pseuds/TheColorBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time there was a prince. His days were spent as a bed-ridden invalid, exhausted and sickly. Yet, every morning they found twelve pairs of dancing shoes beside his bed, the soles worn through. </p><p>(Originally written in June 2007)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shoes that were Danced to Pieces

**Author's Note:**

> A professional ballet dancer can go through as many as three or more pairs of pointe shoes in a single performance.

Once upon a time there was a prince.

His days were spent as a bed-ridden invalid, exhausted and sickly. Yet, every morning they found twelve pairs of dancing shoes beside his bed, the soles worn through. 

The prince's feet had sores on them, the sort that the court dancers often got after years of dancing. Which was impossible. His days were spent in bed. At night, his doors were locked. And the king offered a reward to anyone who would resolve the mystery of the prince's illness, and the twelve pairs of dancing slippers.

Teggren was the young soldier that came one day. He bowed before the king and queen and said that he would like to try to discover the prince's secret. He was allowed to attempt the trial. In the evening, he would be summoned to the prince's bedchamber. He was left the rest of the afternoon to do as he pleased in the castle.

Teggren spent the day flirting with the castle maids. They were charmed by the handsome young man, and giggled when they talked to him. They told him that many young men and women before him had tried to discover the source of the prince's illness and worn-out slippers. The men had sought the reward in wealth and lands. The women had hoped to win a marriage with the prince. None had succeeded in their attempts. 

Then Teggren asked one of the servant girls, had they ever wondered? Why dancing slippers. It seemed a strange thing for a man to wear out: twelve pairs of dancing slippers. 

Teggren had two left feet himself. He didn't care at all for dancing.

"I've heard a tale about twelve dancing maidens," said one girl, a load of laundry in her arms. "And stories about people made to dance by fairies all through the night until they died of it. I hear, when the prince was young, he used to watch the court ballet dancers. He loved it. But His majesty worried about the interest, and forced him away from the dancers and any performances.”

\--

Evening came, and Teggren was lead to the prince's private quarters. He sat down in a chair by the wall, across from the prince's bed. A strange-looking girl came into the room with a glass of wine. Teggren did not recognize her from his run in the castle, and he did not like the way she smiled at him. 

Teggren pursed his lips as he looked at her, and then her offering. He only pretended to drink it. 

She left the room, and the door was locked. Teggren closed his eyes and feigned sleep. 

At the stroke of midnight, the prince got out of bed and dressed in a fine, white shirt and light, close-fitted leggings. He tapped the wall, and the bed moved aside of its own accord to reveal a passage leading down beneath the castle. 

Teggren sprang up when the prince had gone out of sight, and followed him down. 

Teggren followed the prince through a forest of silver, then one of gold, then one of diamond. Teggren stopped to collect a branch from each forest, the metal and diamond snapping with a sound like breaking glass. Then they came to a palace by a black lake, and the doors were thrown open to show a great marble hall.

No one stopped Teggren as he came after the prince, and they walked into glittering ballroom, with velvet draperies and a dozen golden chandeliers. The same strange girl from before came to the prince, and presented him with a new pair of soft dancing slippers. The prince put them on. The girl looked past the prince as he adjusted the laces, and she smiled at Teggren in a way that was hardly a smile at all. 

Musicians began to play. 

They began with a waltz, the prince walking out into the middle of the dance floor with a number of other young men and ladies. 

Teggren did not know much, or appreciate much about dancing. He stood by the wall, watching and bored silly. Useless court frippery. 

The dance ended, and all the dancers except the prince left the floor. The music changed, and the prince did two quick steps before _leaping_ into the air--

And Teggren made a sound that he would not have recognized as his own. It was as though something about the prince had changed utterly and he had become something beautiful and _powerful_. His steps were light and quick. His jumps seemed to defy gravity. But most of all, there was passion in the movement, and something faraway and focused in his eyes, in that slim, tired face.

The prince danced. 

There were twelve dances in all through the night. With women, or alone, in groups, or with men in a kind of accompaniment, each dance wore out a new pair of dancing slippers.

The prince would sink to the floor between dances as the night wore on, gasping, and in obvious pain and exhaustion. Then he would jump up again for the next dance, and a kind of elegant mask would slide over his face, unreadable. 

Half of Teggren wanted to drag the prince out of that dance hall forcibly, then and there. The other half of him couldn't take his eyes off the dancing prince. It was like watching a spell, or something that he had never seen before in his entire life. He knew that he would never look at this prince in the same way again, and at dawn the prince was carried back through the forests and returned to his bedroom on a litter. Teggren returned behind them and hardly seemed to notice all the gold and silver and diamonds glittering all around them. 

The sun rose in the world above, pearly light creeping past the drawn curtains. 

Teggren sat by the prince's bedside.

He asked, "Why do you do it? Why do you dance. Is it sorcery, or do you--"Because despite the pain, he knew. The prince truly--he must have truly loved it, somehow. Impossible as that might have seemed. 

The prince slept on.

\--

Teggren begged for another night to seek an answer to the prince's mysterious illness, presenting to the king and queen a branch from the silver forest. Astonished by the artifact, they granted his request. 

The second night Teggren came to the ballroom, he stood again by the wall to watch the prince. A Lady approached him halfway through the night. She was dressed like a queen and was beautiful as a marble carving, and Teggren knew that she ruled this court. 

The Lady looked at him coldly. "All the others drank the wine, and slept through the night while the prince danced."

Teggren shrugged. He avoided looking into her beautiful, chilled eyes. 

Then she asked, "Would you stop him from doing what he loves?"

And Teggren did not answer. He did not know what he could have answered.

As they left at dawn, Teggren realized--blood had soaked into the last pair of the prince's slippers. He had left faint, bloody streaks across the floor as he danced. 

\--

On the third day, Teggren presented to the king and queen a branch from the gold forest. 

That night, the prince did not begin to dance immediately, as he did before. He went among the other young men and women of that otherworldly court, talking and drinking wine. Laughing.

Then the prince came to where the young soldier was standing alone. He stood by Teggren in silence for a few moments, sipping his wine. Then he said: "When I was eight, a lady came to me and said: she would teach me how to dance. Her condition was that, when I turned eighteen, I would dance every night for her at her court. I never realized--"

Then he broke off, and turned to look at Teggren with this strange, hopeless, _searching_ look. He expected revulsion, Teggren realized. An utter, pitiable dismissal of...of what the prince was, and of everything he had done. 

"That wasn't fairy trickery, you know," the prince suddenly said fiercely. "That was my work-- _I_ can dance like that. Anyone who works for years and years, dancing every night--The only magic is to add to my endurance. I don't know how else I would be able to last through an entire night. As it is, I sleep whole days to recover. And then, the next night, I dance again."

Then the prince looked away. "Of course, you are only here for that reward--"

"You're dancing is a wonder," Teggren said without waiting for him to finish. "The reward has nothing to do with it." 

Their eyes met for a brief moment. 

Then the prince was summoned to the dance floor. 

\--

He thought he knew what the prince was clinging to, then: The pain of the dance. The utter dedication. The fear of losing what you love, (what you know), even when it causes you great suffering. 

And the prince danced and danced and danced until his feet bled. 

\--

The fourth day Teggren offered the diamond branch, and he knew that this would be his final chance to do....

He did not know what he could do.

He sat by the prince's bedside all through that day and talked to him. He talked about all of the things that the prince could never see. About sunlight and real trees and real flowers, and summer days and sweet wind and of dancing by the castle lake as the sun rose over the trees and stopping when he _wanted_ to stop, when his legs gave out and he could lie in the tall grass and why

 _why_ was he so afraid of dancing before everyone else, that he had to chain himself to some kind of fairy court and feel that was the only way that he could continue to dance? Why.

"Your dancing...is a wonder," Teggren whispered. Quiet, so quiet. "You have nothing, _nothing_ to be ashamed of."

\--

Teggren walked for the fourth time through the forests of silver, gold, and diamond. But this night, the prince waited for him on the path, and they went together in silence to the palace beside the black lake. 

The prince was called out to the dance floor...and then Teggren had run out and was again with him, by his elbow. They could hear the shocked whispers coming from the onlookers.

"What are you doing, you can't dance," the prince hissed, seizing him by his arm. 

"Of course I can dance," Teggren retorted. "Anyone with two working feet can dance."

The music began, and the prince let go and began to dance. So did Teggren. And it was true, Teggren could not dance, it was almost painful to watch his awkward hopping, but on he went, through the entire song without stopping. By the end they were both sweating and breathing heavily, but Teggren grinned at the prince as the other man was putting on his next pair of dancing shoes. 

"If I, the country lumpkin, can stand here and make a fool of myself dancing before a fairy court--you, the dancing prodigy, can most certainly dance before everyone else at your castle."

The prince frowned at him. Sweat trickled down his nose. "But I--"

The prince stopped as a shadow fell between them. The Lady had come, and her face was cold and white and beautiful. She looked angry.

"How _dare_ you make a mockery of my court--"

Teggren went on above her voice, loud and insistent "You told me yourself, that dancing is _yours_ , that magic had nothing to do with it--"

" _Remove yourself from my palace,_ " the Lady was screaming.

"--so _stop_ this. Stop it, or you will destroy your feet, or _kill_ yourself from exhaustion, and _then how can you dance_?"

The Lady might have arranged to have the prince taught to dance, but she could not have loved it. Not truly. And she had asked ...if Teggren would have stopped the prince from doing what _he_ loved. It was the prince after all, wasn't it? Who was giving her the power over him. And Teggren said so, as the Lady screamed and screamed at him, like the wind and the ocean crashing round them and trying to drown them out. 

“Well, isn’t it?” Teggren asked insistently. 

The princed looked at him, and then suddenly there was silence: as if only there were only ever the two of them in that great, gilded dance hall.

"Do you want to stay?" Teggren asked, gently.

There was a long moment of quiet, before the prince finally shook his head without saying a word. 

Teggren put a hand on the prince's shoulder. 

"Come on then."

\--

And they broke the spell.

The people had vanished and the palace began to shake and crumble around them. Teggren and the prince departed quickly from the hall, through the forests and back to the world above. 

\--

Thereafter, the prince returned to health. No longer was there ever found twelve worn-out pairs of dancing slippers beside his bed each morning. Teggren became a very wealthy man, given titles and land and money, and he would marry a noblewoman at the prince's court.

Teggren requested--insisted, really--that the prince dance at his wedding. To the shock of the royal court, the prince granted the request. 

He danced beautifully.


End file.
